ABBYY Vantage Reviews

We need to understand ABBYY Vantage to add some projects and push them to our customers.

I have worked on many different OCR extraction tools, like document understanding, which uses ML technology. Compared to other tools, ABBYY Vantage is better because it's very user-friendly. It has a wide variety where we can manipulate or code the document as per our specifications, like OCR or many more specifications.

Since we are using a trial version, we don't have administration access to create a tenant to integrate my OCR series with Postman. Right now, we are doing one POC, and to complete that POC, we need that access because it's a requirement.

I have been using ABBYY Vantage for a couple of months.

In my team, three to four people are using ABBYY Vantage.

Our experience with our FlexiCapture was good. In FlexiCapture, you have to create templates because it does not use ML or AI technology. We learned that ABBYY Vantage uses ML technology, and we want to explore it.

ABBYY Vantage's initial setup is very beautiful. We didn't face any hurdles during the setup.

The solution is deployed on ABBYY cloud in our organization.

Overall, I rate ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

I am using the solution mostly for voice processing.

We have approximately 30 use cases in our company.

The most valuable feature of ABBYY Vantage is flexibility. You are able to edit at a granular level providing good control over the process. Additionally, the brochures and guides were helpful in learning the solution.

ABBYY Vantage could improve the processing of handwritten notes.

I have used ABBYY Vantage within the last 12 months.

In our region, we have a lot of Arabic text that is handwritten which the solution could improve.

I rate the stability of ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

The scalability of the solution depends on the use case. However, if the solution is managed well it is scalable.

Our company is expanding and correctly we have approximately 16 users of the solution.

I have not used the support from the vendor.

There might be a need to complete a few courses to get used to the implementation of ABBYY Vantage.

We did the implementation of ABBYY Vantage in-house.

We were able to qualify for a reasonable price. The price is in the low to medium range compared to other solutions.

I rate the price of ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

I evaluated IBM and AI builder prior to choosing ABBYY Vantage.

If you do the training it will be easy to use.

I rate ABBYY Vantage an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to develop structures for automatically reading customer documents. We produce the document definition for each layup and send data to customers. We have 40-50 developers using the solution in various departments. 

In the future, we will use the solution for automatic classifications of documents. 

The solution responds well to automatic document classifications with a 90% success rate. 

There are sometimes issues with calculations or integrations with the server when running multiple products with different languages. This causes data to not display properly in data fields. 

The system does not always train itself to recognize data properly from system leads. 

A more comprehensive training program should be available because free training books do not provide the level of detail needed. Sometimes, we encounter issues with an automatization but cannot resolve it even though we completed the associated training module. Training for particular scenarios need to be included in modules because integrations can be tricky or complex without these details. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very scalable. 

We had one issue with speed where we could not achieve the minimum time for processing which should have been seconds. Otherwise, the solution is really fast with basic or fixed processing. 

Support does not answer tickets in a timely manner but eventually closes questions. 

For example, I have a few tickets for assistance with DVP, data pages, and working with multiple languages but support has not yet responded adequately to the email inquiries. I would like detailed information and an explanation for whether a shadow case can be used. I cannot authenticate, determine if available onloads would fix captures, or integrate without proper answers. 

Support should respond quickly to production issues. Time zones are an issue in getting responses because support works on Russian time. 

Support should have access to prior tickets to get a cumulative picture of issues a user has experienced. Generally, they do not have details from prior tickets to inform solutions so they base their answers on only the current ticket. Having cumulative knowledge will allow support to better understand a customer's situation and use case. 

I rate support a six out of ten. 

Neutral

The setup can be complex because it takes time to learn all the menu options. Our setup took one or two months because we wanted to ensure it was done properly. We do not use many of the menu options as our use case is rather basic. 

The help page is not very comprehensive or detailed. It uses code that is formal and the world is now more informal so some options might confuse users.

I have not evaluated other options. 

The solution is a good product but there is always room for improvement. I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use ABBYY FlexiCapture to recognize pictures or PDF files and transfer them to Word or Excel.

It's easy to use.

The integration with UiPath is not good.

I would like to see more documentation and guides to help gain more in-depth knowledge of how to use ABBYY FlexiCapture.

I've been working with this solution for about three or four months.

I have had no issues with stability so far.

I chose ABBYY because it had more solutions for intelligence automation, and it looked like I could combine it with other automation solutions. We currently have 20 to 30 users.

I recommend ABBYY FlexiCapture, and on a scale from one to ten with ten being the best, I would rate it at eight.

We use this solution for invoice processing.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ability to extract content from documents. It is able to identify specific fields and special characters. We are able to train the tool to identify certain sets of fields based on specific definitions. This solution is also user-friendly. 

This solution could be improved by offering better integration with other platforms. They have released the connectors for all other RPA tools such as Blue Prism UiPath, but this integration is quite challenging to use. It's not very straightforward or easy to understand for a non-technical person. The integration should be configured in such a way that anyone can understand it and use it.

I have been using this solution for six to eight months.

ABBYY is a user-friendly and stable product. ABBYY is more flexible and stable compared to a solution like Kofax.

This is definitely a scalable solution. 

The customer support team are knowledgeable and responsive. Their response depends on the license that you hold with them. Their licenses come with predefined response and SLA times. If you are a golden license holder, you will receive a response within three to four hours. 

Positive

There are different sets of initial configurations and this depends on the use case. We have standalone and multi-server setups. Being a consultant, I configured ABBYY FlexiCapture myself. I could easily go through their documentation and figure out what needed to be done and how it needed to be done. The documentation is user-friendly.

They have a trial license that is limited to a certain number of pages. The paid license varies from six months to one year depending on the number of documents that need to be processed. We are a consulting firm and our license model depends on customer requirements. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

It would be during the data extraction process. The ability to extract and insert data, then structuralize it into the actionable format, would be the most valuable.

I would have liked to see them make it easier for business users to implement themselves. This is what they have done with Vantage, which is essentially a low code/no code, slightly enhanced version of FlexiCapture that is already available.

I have been involved with ABBYY FlexiCapture off and on for approximately one year.

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a stable product. The stability is good.

The scalability of ABBYY FlexiCapture is good.

This solution is used on a daily basis throughout the organization.

My company has approximately 230,000 employees worldwide.

The technical support is good. They solve problems relatively quickly.

I am familiar with IBM Datacap.

The initial setup was relatively complex. The people who install it must be knowledgeable about what they are doing.

It took some time to get everything up and running properly.

The deployment was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment, but I'm not sure how much.

It would be far too difficult. Because we obviously deliver these types of solutions not only in-house but also for a large number of other companies. There's plenty of ROI that we have managed to deliver for our customers, in particular, but I can't give you figures.

I don't recall the pricing.

In terms of intelligent document processing, the company uses a variety of platforms, including IBM Datacap and ABBYYFlexiCapture, among others. We were constantly reviewing market products, and we were also doing things like Hyperscience. At the moment, I'm working on a review for Vantage, which is ABBYY's other recently released product, rather than FlexiCapture.

We are partners with ABBYY.

If you are going to implement it, I would recommend a combination of engaging with a delivery partner to accelerate your initial setup and scalability and then building your own internal capability, which requires accredited users, in parallel.

Because FlexiCapture requires a significant amount of domain knowledge or technical capability to implement. I am not sure if this is outside the scope of your research, but if a company is looking to implement ABBYY products in general and does not want to require a significant increase in internal capabilities, ABBYY Vantage may be a better option.

I would rate ABBYY FlexiCapture an eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of ABBYY FlexiCapture is the ability to create your own template on the fly. You can train and classify, you can work with those different templates without the need to do special programming for it or with minimum programming. Additionally, the solution is supporting the Arabic OCR, both of these combined features are the most important for us in the Egyptian market.

ABBYY FlexiCapture could improve the performance. We are looking for better performance because it can be a lengthy capture process and the accuracy needs to be enhanced when it comes to Arabic.

In the next upgrade, ABBYY FlexiCapture could add invoices for the Arabic or for the Middle East because it's based on European or American standards mainly.

I have been using ABBYY FlexiCapture for approximately four years.

ABBYY FlexiCapture is stable, we did not find any problems.

In our usage, ABBYY FlexiCapture has been scalable enough. We had a cluster-based operation.

I rate the support form ABBYY FlexiCapture a four out of five.

The support could be more responsive.

I have used OpenText previously and overall the solution might work better, but for our use case, ABBYY FlexiCapture has all the features we need that are important, such as Arabic OCR, and is priced well.

The initial setup of ABBYY FlexiCapture is easy.

The price of ABBYY FlexiCapture is better than some competitors, such as OpenText.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate ABBYY FlexiCapture an eight out of ten.

The solution is used mostly for form extraction, fixed form extraction, text forms, data extraction, OCR, et cetera. We use it for digital document processing.

We run software that does basically business process automation. It's given us a form extraction utility to add. We're utilizing the ATR in the FlexiCapture engine, and in that way, we can use the FlexiCapture engine to process forms. Any forms that contain data, we can extract.

Without that, we would have to use pattern extraction, regular expressions, and things like that. This is a forms processing engine, which allows us to be able to set anchors and OCR values, et cetera. 

The form extractions engine and the FlexiCapture designer are really useful.

The solution is easy to set up.

We have found the solution to be stable so far. 

The product is extremely scalable. 

The UI is okay, however, I remember the scanning and the way that you actually get documents into the system. The FlexiCapture, what they call a process developer, could use some work.

The solution needs more web or cloud-based development. Cloud-based FlexiCapture development would be great.

The on-premise web version doesn't seem to be intuitive or easy to use or install. It's not user-friendly.

Technical support is slow to respond.

The pricing is a bit high and we are looking into other options. 

I've been using the solution for three years now. I've used it for a while. 

The stability is good. It's a reliable solution. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution scales very, very well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. 

We have about ten users on the solution right now. They are mostly developers and consultants. 

Technical support could be better. once you create a ticket, it takes some time for them to respond, from a partner perspective. You send a ticket to an email address. There's no phone number. You can send it to support@abbyy.com and you have to wait. 

They do have a fairly thorough knowledge base. There are also available videos on YouTube. However, if you're having complex problems, it can take sometimes days for them to respond. If you're running a professional system, that's not going to cut it.

I don't know if they have level levels of support, and we have maybe just a really poor version of the support system. I can imagine that, if you pay for a really high level of support, then, of course, they're available. That said, from our perspective, being a partner developer, we've had problems with the support, for sure. If you pay for Professional Services hours, it would be my assumption that they would respond right away, however.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. It was not too complex or overly difficult. 

Licensing is paid on a yearly basis. I don't know the exact price of everything, however, I do know that it is expensive from the perspective of our management team. We've also been looking for other solutions.

We are a partner with ABBYY.

I'm using version 12. I believe it is the latest version. I haven't seen any updates as of recently. There could be a version 14 out, however, I'm not sure. We're using the desktop version. 

I would advise those considering the solution to watch the YouTube lessons and pay for Professional Services training and assistance. 

At this point, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for processing documents and extracting data from them - using the OCR capabilities. Documents include invoices, purchase orders, things like that. I'm an IT solution manager and we are customers of ABBYY. 

We've had two main benefits from ABBYY. Screening documents is a time-consuming activity, which has no real added value by itself so the solution saves the company a lot of time. The second benefit relates to the energy involved in employees going through documents. It's tiring work and mistakes creep in. We now have an increased level of accuracy by using the solution. 

Clearly the OCR capability of ABBYY is the top feature in our context. We can rely on the ABBYY knowledge and experience to extract data and recognize texts in different situations and especially in different languages, particularly English and Chinese. 

The main thing they need to work on is simplification of the solution, particularly use of the search tool. Configuring is quite complex and it's not very user friendly, particularly the user interface if you're trying to figure it out by yourself and create some configurations for processing documents. I know they are working on it. We used the new ideas on page projects they recently released and that has been great for enabling non-IT proficient users to start configuring and using it.

The stability of the solution is good. 

It's quite easy to scale. We currently have around 10 users, mainly IT professionals but also other users. I'm responsible for managing and maintaining the solution with a support team, and we generally carry out an annual upgrade, rather than an upgrade whenever ABBYY releases a new version. We use it every day and hope to increase usage as it would help more and more people at the company. 

The technical support was good. 

The initial setup was quite simple, perhaps slightly more complicated because it's on premise so it includes taking care of the architecture. I managed the project and we built a platform in a few months. A consultant worked with me and another solution architect during the initial period. The total setup took between two to three months. 

We haven't measured ROI but definitely as mentioned, there are many time-saving benefits.

We are on-prem so we're just paying the license fee. They have a clear pricing model. You pay extra for the training content. 

The main difficulty, as I mentioned, is to get people started on it if they're not specifically trained on ABBYY or not an IT professional. It's initially quite difficult and more so now that the learning material is not freely accessible online. Other than that, it's just a matter of following the documentation and using it. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

Most of the use cases were invoice-related for sectors such as supply chain and finance. Sometimes, they were a little bit related to HR and payroll. We also had use cases for passports and IDs and documents related to HR and onboarding. 

I've also worked on a larger scale project for importing and exporting in Dubai. It had invoices, country of origin statements, and everything else that comes through with an import check event.

It was on-premise on all the projects I've worked on. I've never worked on it with the cloud. We would connect it to an RPA tool, such as UiPath or Automation Anywhere. So, it was a part of a larger solution.

Usually, it does the reading task for a document, such as an invoice, and that is a very mundane task for an employee when they have other stuff to do. It pretty much takes that off their plate. It gives them time to focus on bigger picture things or even look at the process as a whole.

It lessens the errors that can happen. An employee can be tired and read a number wrong, but if it is a computer-generated invoice, it is going to be of the best quality. If it is computer-generated, it will come out with zero error every time, and it will do it a lot faster than a person. It will extract the information and continue doing whatever you need to.

Verification station is a really good feature. It allows part-owners to be able to take a look at what comes out of the tool after a document, such as an invoice, is run through ABBYY. It also allows them to update it if there are any mistakes. So, it kind of gives them a little more control over what goes through the system and lessens the errors.

They say that they have invoice training or document training where if you put in a certain number of documents of the same type and you fix it once, twice, or a few times, it'll automatically be able to read the same document perfectly without you having to create a layout for it to follow. That has never worked properly for any project, so I just stopped recommending it completely. We spent time trying to test and getting a bunch of invoices to test it with, and in the end, it just didn't do what it needed to. If they fix that or if they can improve on that, that would be great. It will save a lot of time for a lot of people, and it will allow people with less experience with ABBYY to be able to use it.

The way FlexiLayout Studio and Project Station read a document, such as an invoice, is a little bit different. So, if you set it up in FlexiLayout Studio and create a template, it will read it just fine, but when you import it into Project Studio, sometimes, it will not read it the same way. The way both of them read is a little bit different. So, you have to go back, and you have to change it again, and it is trial and error until you get it right.

Its price should be a little lower. It is a lot higher than the competition.

The last project I worked on was in February of this year.

It is pretty stable. If I remember correctly, it has only crashed once, and I don't think it was a system issue. It was just some weird, bizarre glitch that happened at the time. Once the projects were live and running on the client system, we've never had any issues that I can think of.

Its scalability is good, but it also depends on how you're working on a project from the beginning. I like to put everything together, and I usually do think of it in a way that if we were going to add invoices in the future, it won't be a hassle. It is pretty scalable. I can have many different invoices on the same project. I can have a project going on the client-side for years and then just add to it if needed.

Usually, we have some type of business analyst whose main role is doing something that we call an OCR study. The business analyst would be reading the invoices and just telling us what the client wants to extract from them. On their end, they also make sure that the quality of the invoices is good for ABBYY. It can't be something that is written over and damaged or put in someone's pocket for a day and then in the scanner. It won't give us perfect results.

There would also be a developer who would take a look at the OCR study fed by the analyst and then think of how to develop each template. If you don't understand how you're going to design the whole project, you might need someone. Because we're putting it into another automation tool as well, after we've sort of developed everything, depending on the scale of the project, we may have somebody dedicated to just testing the submission before sending it over to the client.

We have plans to use it, and of course, it is a good product, but we work with what the client wants. So, if a client doesn't want it, then they're not going to be using it. It is not like a solution for every case in my line of work. It depends on if the client actually has a bunch of invoices or a bunch of documents that they need to read quickly. If that's the case, then we definitely recommend it every time. We recommend it over any other OCR solution on the market. ABBYY in itself isn't a perfect tool, but ABBYY is pretty good. It is not the best on the market at the moment.

I've been in contact with several people from ABBYY and their support staff. They're very helpful.

We were using the default OCR tool that came with the UiPath software. It is integrated with Google OCR and Microsoft OCR, which are okay for smaller, simpler documents, but they're not going to give you the control that you can have with ABBYY. The engine itself isn't as good.

ABBYY is definitely more mature. It's all-around better. If I pass through an invoice PDF, the percentage of getting everything right with ABBYY is higher than it is with the others. It is definitely a lot more expensive, but I can tailor what I need to each document, and I have multi-lingual support. I can pretty much just get behind what ABBYY is trying to read and make sure it is reading everything correctly, whereas, with Google OCR or Microsoft OCR, I just worked with whatever came out, and I had no control over it.

It depends. There are two types of installations. There is the standalone installation, and there is the server installation. The standalone one is very simple. It is just a normal install. You just push the license through the command prompt, and that's pretty much it. The other one is just going to take a little while longer depending on how you're going to deploy the solution for FlexiCapture on the system. From my experience, if someone is going to install it for the first time, they might need just a bit of help, but it is not that complex.

The duration depends on the solution. It depends on what a customer wants and how many invoices you're going to be preparing in ABBYY, but usually, we say that a good rule of thumb is about one to two hours for a normal invoice. If it has a complex table, then it may take three to four hours for an invoice. So, the time taken would depend on what the client actually wants. If we have five invoices for which the customer wants to use ABBYY, they can be created in a day or two days. We'll give half a day for installation, which also depends on how many servers we're going to be using. We'll give like another half a day for testing and pushing the project. So, maybe two days for five invoices is fair.

In terms of the implementation strategy, first, I would pretty much gather all the invoices the customer needs, and usually, if they are in the same sector and in the same business, they'll be very similar. If we have 50 invoices, I would rather waste an hour or two figuring out the similar invoices and then creating just 10 templates instead of 50. After that, I'd start with identifying the means of the values that I want to extract and figure those out in all of those 50 invoices, especially the ones that are going to be in the same template. Then, I'd get to work on those templates. Once I finish those, I'd push them to the project so that I can test them there, and if everything is working fine in the project, then I'd just give the solution to the customer.

We have definitely seen an ROI. Most of the ROI is related to time because it'll take a while for a human to go through a full process. If we assume that we have a process that takes a human or an employee an hour, that would be eight hours in a day. OCR would really cut that time by a lot. I'm also talking about adding automation to it, so I'm pretty much a little biased here. We can cut that time down by a lot, and once we do that, then we just have the whole process automated. It is not being done by an employee anymore, so that employee is free to do something else. So, you're saving time, money, and brainpower.

Its price should be a little lower. It is a lot higher than the competition, and if they just break the gap a little, then more people might jump onto their product. Their price is definitely a deterrent in the few cases that I remember.

They have monthly and yearly options, and if you want, they also have per project and per page options. We partnered with them for a few projects, and they provided us with a trial license that we use on our end for using the system, employing it, and developing the solution. On the client's end, they will charge them for the license because that's ongoing. They also get support and everything else.

They do charge extra for different types of installation. They have the standalone, which is pretty straightforward and a lot cheaper than the server installation. Server installation gives you a lot more, and it gives you control over the environment. They have a web management studio for the whole thing. You can create users and give people different permissions and track the progress of everything, so that's going to be a lot more expensive. I remember that one client was complaining about having to pay extra for having the Arabic language added to the system. I think they made all the languages free after that, but I'm not 100% sure.

I would advise first looking at what you're trying to extract from the documents that you have. If they are simple enough and are being extracted properly through a cheaper or a free OCR tool, then just use that. It is not going to be worth the price. If you have lots of invoices and some of them get very complex, and you'd rather have the control over making sure everything is fine, and you have no room for error, then it would be better to invest in ABBYY.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that when creating templates with different documents, make sure that you're using different identifiers for those documents. That's because, in the beginning, you might think that it would automatically know the difference between, let's say, an Amazon invoice and a Walmart invoice, but it won't unless you tell it. So, you have to make sure that those files are unique. You also have to make sure that what you've created fits perfectly for that invoice. If you leave a little bit of leeway, it is possible that something else will be picked up that you don't want, and then it will just ruin the rest of the process. It is no fault of the OCR. You just didn't restrict it properly.

I would rate ABBYY FlexiCapture an eight out of 10. It is not perfect, but it is the best I've used.